An East Boston bistro? Kind of doesn't have a ring to it — especially since we're not talking about Orient Heights or Jeffries Point. Ecco, perhaps East Boston's first trendy bistro, is three twists around the tunnel entrance from the airport road and about as close to the Central and Maverick Squares midpoint as you can get without a FastLane transponder, but would win fans in any Boston neighborhood. Eastie just has cheaper real estate, so prices here are pleasantly moderate.

The "martini bar" part of Ecco's name refers to a two-page list of retro cocktails and revised versions. The "Ecco Martini" ($9.95), made with imported gin or vodka and cheese-stuffed olives, is about as classic as it gets. Whether shaken or stirred, a martini should be a cold, dry drink that emphasizes the herbal and resinous notes of the gin. What this needed was more chill and a more expressive brand of spirits. There was no such problem with a well-balanced white-peach bellini ($9.95), nor a reasonably sour "Pomegranate Margarita" ($9.95) or a basil mojito ($9.95) — the last, a successful variation of the refreshing Cuban mint julep. The one aesthetic problem in the current revival of mixed drinks has been the tendency to sweeten the traditional sour and bitter accents. Ecco avoids this trap, except where clearly labeled. After all, no one will order a "French vanilla martini" under any illusion that it would be a dry, bracing drink.

Food starts with excellent, warm whole-grain bread in a kind of cigar box and a spread that tastes like butter and cheese compounded. Something as basic as flash-fried calamari ($8.50) stands out for the fantastic frying, the fresh-tasting squid, and the superior dip of mayonnaise with lemon and Sriracha hot sauce. Because most of the heat in chile sauce is oil-soluble, and mayonnaise is an oil-in-water emulsion, the sauce has just a nice bite and tons of flavor.

Wild-mushroom chowder ($8.50) with a cone of porcini-inflected potato in the center is superb, with a meaty-woodsy flavor to the cream stock and lots of different wild mushrooms in the bowl. Lobster and roasted corn chowder ($10) has an impressive amount of lobster meat and an interesting accent of cilantro, but the stock isn't based on seafood. That's odd, since the kitchen also produces a "Simply Mussel 'Hot Pot' " ($9), a big heap of cultured mussels in a butter-leek-garlic-wine sauce good enough to soak up with the three provided toasts. (The chefs could steal a little mussel broth for the lobster chowder.)

The Regal Beagle The Regal Beagle is making a quick success doing what almost all the new restaurants want to do: small plates; comfort food with a gourmet twist; a mixture of high and low; a bit of locovore, green, and slow fare; some salty fast food; interesting drinks; and scrambled nostalgia.

Margaret’s With the gallery scene hopping, the New Bedford area definitely bears exploring for its culinary standouts.

Rasoi When Sanjiv Dahr opened Kabob and Curry in 1990, he hewed closely to the dishes of northern India with which the college crowd and Providence diners were most familiar.

La Laiterie To truly sample the bistro’s offerings, we turned to heartier fare.

Sami’s Dining options for night owls are limited to a handful of Chinatown eateries and a few dubious diners. We also suffer from a dearth of good street food: what we’d give for one decent LA-style taco truck!

Benatti Even a slice of zucchini makes you want more . . . zucchini. You are perhaps vegan? Order two of these and sneer at the carnivores of the world.

Laymoon is lemon El-taha’s house in Falmouth is populated with an easy Lebanese-American combo-culture.

T.J. Scallywaggle's It’s eye-opening for a professed omnivore to visit the improbably named T.J. Scallywaggle’s, a 100-percent-vegan pizza and sub shop.

The West Deck Shame on us. There we were, scratching our heads over which Newport restaurant to choose as the destination for an visitor, and we didn’t think of the West Deck until last.

Caffé Itri At 18 years, Caffé Itri is one of the longest-running places on Cranston’s “restaurant row”, and for very good reason, as we re-learned on a recent visit.

REVIEW: BONCHON | August 10, 2012 What am I doing in this basement in Harvard Square, reviewing the second location of a multi-national franchise chain?

REVIEW: CARMELINA'S | July 25, 2012 After a good run with "Italian tapas" under the name Damiano (a play on the given name of chef-owner Damien "Domenic" DiPaola), this space has been rechristened as Carmelina's — after the chef's mother and his first restaurant, opened when he was an undergraduate in Western Mass — and the menu reconfigured to feature more entrées.

REVIEW: TONIC | July 06, 2012 Bad restaurant idea number 16: let's do a neighborhood bar-bistro where there already is one.

REVIEW: HAPPY’S BAR AND KITCHEN | June 20, 2012 In a year of bad restaurant ideas, one of the better bets is to have a successful fancy-food chef try a downscale restaurant.